Dowd via NYT: "How many places will be in shambles by the time the Bush crew leaves office?
Given that the Bush team has dealt with both gulf crises, Iraq and Katrina, with the same deadly mixture of arrogance and incompetence, and a refusal to face reality, it's frightening to think how it will handle the most demanding act of government domestic investment since the New Deal.
Even though we know W. likes to be in his bubble with his feather pillow, the stories this week are breathtaking about the lengths the White House staff had to go to in order to capture Incurious George's attention.
Newsweek reported that the reality of Katrina did not sink in for the president until days after the levees broke, turning New Orleans into a watery grave. It took a virtual intervention of his top aides to make W. watch the news about the worst natural disaster in a century. Dan Bartlett made a DVD of newscasts on the hurricane to show the president on Friday morning as he flew down to the Gulf Coast.
The aides were scared to tell the isolated president that he should cut short his vacation by a couple of days, Newsweek said, because he can be 'cold and snappish in private.' Mike Allen wrote in Time about one 'youngish aide' who was so terrified about telling Mr. Bush he was wrong about something during the first term, he 'had dry heaves' afterward."
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Singapore and Katrina
Friedman via NYT: "Speaking of Katrina, Sumiko Tan, a columnist for the Sunday edition of The Straits Times in Singapore, wrote: 'We were shocked at what we saw. Death and destruction from natural disaster is par for the course. But the pictures of dead people left uncollected on the streets, armed looters ransacking shops, survivors desperate to be rescued, racial divisions - these were truly out of sync with what we'd imagined the land of the free to be, even if we had encountered homelessness and violence on visits there. ... If America becomes so unglued when bad things happen in its own backyard, how can it fulfill its role as leader of the world?'
Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. 'Today's conservatives,' he wrote, 'differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.
'The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. ... [But] it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up.'"
Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. 'Today's conservatives,' he wrote, 'differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.
'The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. ... [But] it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up.'"
Politicos call for music copyright reform
via CNET News.com: "WASHINGTON--Legal music-download services won't be able to compete fully with their free- and illegal-download counterparts until copyright law changes, a Virginia congressman said Tuesday.
'The illegal services offer all of the songs, and the legal services don't, and therein lies the crux of the problem,' Rep. Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, said in a speech at the Future of Music Policy Summit here.
The remedy, he said, lies in a congressional rewrite of portions of copyright law that govern licensing and royalty fees and make it cumbersome for legal download services to add material to their inventories. Boucher said he hopes his committee will have a new bill written and reported to the U.S. House of Representatives by the end of this congressional term in November. (The congressman has also been a vocal critic of other pieces of digital copyright law.)
The Senate Judiciary Committee has also been exploring how to streamline and simplify the royalty system in a way that 'balances the competing interests of artists and publishers' but 'doesn't continue to lead to legal challenges,' Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told summit attendees in a noon speech.
Any changes to copyright law must be 'technology neutral,' she emphasized. 'The government needs to have a light touch,' she said, so as 'not to unintentionally slow down the process of innovation.'"
'The illegal services offer all of the songs, and the legal services don't, and therein lies the crux of the problem,' Rep. Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, said in a speech at the Future of Music Policy Summit here.
The remedy, he said, lies in a congressional rewrite of portions of copyright law that govern licensing and royalty fees and make it cumbersome for legal download services to add material to their inventories. Boucher said he hopes his committee will have a new bill written and reported to the U.S. House of Representatives by the end of this congressional term in November. (The congressman has also been a vocal critic of other pieces of digital copyright law.)
The Senate Judiciary Committee has also been exploring how to streamline and simplify the royalty system in a way that 'balances the competing interests of artists and publishers' but 'doesn't continue to lead to legal challenges,' Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told summit attendees in a noon speech.
Any changes to copyright law must be 'technology neutral,' she emphasized. 'The government needs to have a light touch,' she said, so as 'not to unintentionally slow down the process of innovation.'"
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
End of the Bush Era
EJ Dionne via washpost.com: "If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national unity, as he seemed to shortly after Sept. 11, the country would never have become so polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly ideological policies and an extreme partisanship. He pushed for more tax cuts for his wealthiest supporters and shamelessly used relatively modest details in the bill creating a Department of Homeland Security as partisan cudgels in the 2002 elections.
He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through. The president assumed things would turn out fine, on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration's strong suits.
And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina."
He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through. The president assumed things would turn out fine, on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration's strong suits.
And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina."
Feds Plan Patent Reform
via CNET News.com: "When Gordon Gould was a graduate student at Columbia University in 1957, he sketched out the concept of a concentrated beam of light amplified in a gas-filled chamber and coined the term 'laser' to describe it.
But Gould waited to seek a patent on his discovery, believing incorrectly that a working prototype was necessary. Eventually, two other researchers were awarded the basic patents instead.
After a decades-long legal tussle, Gould finally reveled in victory when a federal court ruled that the patent application it had approved did not anticipate the common uses of lasers. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office then granted Gould lucrative rights to the invention, in part because as a graduate student he had his original research notebooks date-stamped and notarized.
The legal standard that was applied awards patents to the person who invented a concept first, and it has long been a unique feature of the U.S. patent system. This year, however, Congress is about to consider a controversial proposal from Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, that would grant a patent to the first person to submit the paperwork
--a standard that's common outside the United States."
But Gould waited to seek a patent on his discovery, believing incorrectly that a working prototype was necessary. Eventually, two other researchers were awarded the basic patents instead.
After a decades-long legal tussle, Gould finally reveled in victory when a federal court ruled that the patent application it had approved did not anticipate the common uses of lasers. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office then granted Gould lucrative rights to the invention, in part because as a graduate student he had his original research notebooks date-stamped and notarized.
The legal standard that was applied awards patents to the person who invented a concept first, and it has long been a unique feature of the U.S. patent system. This year, however, Congress is about to consider a controversial proposal from Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, that would grant a patent to the first person to submit the paperwork
--a standard that's common outside the United States."
Friday, September 09, 2005
Krugman: Point Those Fingers
via NYT: "It might make sense to hold off on the criticism if this were the first big disaster on Mr. Bush's watch, or if the chain of mistakes in handling Hurricane Katrina were out of character. But even with the most generous possible assessment, this is the administration's second big policy disaster, after Iraq. And the chain of mistakes was perfectly in character - there are striking parallels between the errors the administration made in Iraq and the errors it made last week.
In Iraq, the administration displayed a combination of paralysis and denial after the fall of Baghdad, as uncontrolled looting destroyed much of Iraq's infrastructure.
The same deer-in-the-headlights immobility prevailed as Katrina approached and struck the Gulf Coast. The storm gave plenty of warning. By the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, the flooding of New Orleans was well under way - city officials publicly confirmed a breach in the 17th Street Canal at 2 p.m. Yet on Tuesday federal officials were still playing down the problem, and large-scale federal aid didn't arrive until last Friday.
In Iraq the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran the country during the crucial first year after Saddam's fall - the period when an effective government might have forestalled the nascent insurgency - was staffed on the basis of ideological correctness and personal connections rather than qualifications. At one point Ari Fleischer's brother was in charge of private-sector development.
The administration followed the same principles in staffing FEMA. The agency had become a highly professional organization during the Clinton years, but under Mr. Bush it reverted to its former status as a 'turkey farm,' a source of patronage jobs.
As Bloomberg News puts it, the agency's 'upper ranks are mostly staffed with people who share two traits: loyalty to President George W. Bush and little or no background in emergency management"
In Iraq, the administration displayed a combination of paralysis and denial after the fall of Baghdad, as uncontrolled looting destroyed much of Iraq's infrastructure.
The same deer-in-the-headlights immobility prevailed as Katrina approached and struck the Gulf Coast. The storm gave plenty of warning. By the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, the flooding of New Orleans was well under way - city officials publicly confirmed a breach in the 17th Street Canal at 2 p.m. Yet on Tuesday federal officials were still playing down the problem, and large-scale federal aid didn't arrive until last Friday.
In Iraq the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran the country during the crucial first year after Saddam's fall - the period when an effective government might have forestalled the nascent insurgency - was staffed on the basis of ideological correctness and personal connections rather than qualifications. At one point Ari Fleischer's brother was in charge of private-sector development.
The administration followed the same principles in staffing FEMA. The agency had become a highly professional organization during the Clinton years, but under Mr. Bush it reverted to its former status as a 'turkey farm,' a source of patronage jobs.
As Bloomberg News puts it, the agency's 'upper ranks are mostly staffed with people who share two traits: loyalty to President George W. Bush and little or no background in emergency management"
Advance Men in Charge
via New York Times: "It's not really all that surprising that the officials who run FEMA are stressing that all-important emergency response function: the public relations campaign. As it turns out, that's all they really have experience at doing.
Michael Brown was made the director after he was asked to resign from the International Arabian Horse Association, and the other top officials at FEMA don't exactly have impressive résumés in emergency management either. The Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday that neither the acting deputy director, Patrick Rhode, nor the acting deputy chief of staff, Brooks Altshuler, came to FEMA with any previous experience in disaster management. Ditto for Scott Morris, the third in command until May.
Mr. Altshuler and Mr. Rhode had worked in the White House's Office of National Advance Operations. Those are the people who decide where the president will stand on stage and which loyal supporters will be permitted into the audience - and how many firefighters will be diverted from rescue duty to surround the president as he patrols the New Orleans airport trying to look busy. Mr. Morris was a press handler with the Bush presidential campaign. Previously, he worked for the company that produced Bush campaign commercials.
* * *
Surely there are loyal Republicans among the 50 directors of state emergency services. But President Bush chose to make FEMA a dumping ground for unqualified cronies - a sure sign that he wanted to hasten the degradation of an agency that conservative Republicans have long considered an evil of big government. Katrina has proved that federal disaster help is vital, and that Mr. Brown and his team of advance men can't do the job. What America needs are federal disaster relief people who actually know something about disaster relief."
Michael Brown was made the director after he was asked to resign from the International Arabian Horse Association, and the other top officials at FEMA don't exactly have impressive résumés in emergency management either. The Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday that neither the acting deputy director, Patrick Rhode, nor the acting deputy chief of staff, Brooks Altshuler, came to FEMA with any previous experience in disaster management. Ditto for Scott Morris, the third in command until May.
Mr. Altshuler and Mr. Rhode had worked in the White House's Office of National Advance Operations. Those are the people who decide where the president will stand on stage and which loyal supporters will be permitted into the audience - and how many firefighters will be diverted from rescue duty to surround the president as he patrols the New Orleans airport trying to look busy. Mr. Morris was a press handler with the Bush presidential campaign. Previously, he worked for the company that produced Bush campaign commercials.
* * *
Surely there are loyal Republicans among the 50 directors of state emergency services. But President Bush chose to make FEMA a dumping ground for unqualified cronies - a sure sign that he wanted to hasten the degradation of an agency that conservative Republicans have long considered an evil of big government. Katrina has proved that federal disaster help is vital, and that Mr. Brown and his team of advance men can't do the job. What America needs are federal disaster relief people who actually know something about disaster relief."
A Legal System in Shambles
via New York Times: "Along with the destruction of homes, neighborhoods and lives, Hurricane Katrina decimated the legal system of the New Orleans region.
More than a third of the state's lawyers have lost their offices, some for good. Most computer records will be saved. Many other records will be lost forever. Some local courthouses have been flooded, imperiling a vast universe of files, records and documents. Court proceedings from divorces to murder trials, to corporate litigation, to custody cases will be indefinitely halted and when proceedings resume lawyers will face prodigious - if not insurmountable - obstacles in finding witnesses and principals and in recovering evidence.
It is an implosion of the legal network not seen since disasters like the Chicago fire of 1871 or the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, events in times so much simpler as to be useless in making much sense of this one.
* * *
'New things come up every day. I think this storm is going to produce more legal issues and complications than anyone has ever imagined.'"
More than a third of the state's lawyers have lost their offices, some for good. Most computer records will be saved. Many other records will be lost forever. Some local courthouses have been flooded, imperiling a vast universe of files, records and documents. Court proceedings from divorces to murder trials, to corporate litigation, to custody cases will be indefinitely halted and when proceedings resume lawyers will face prodigious - if not insurmountable - obstacles in finding witnesses and principals and in recovering evidence.
It is an implosion of the legal network not seen since disasters like the Chicago fire of 1871 or the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, events in times so much simpler as to be useless in making much sense of this one.
* * *
'New things come up every day. I think this storm is going to produce more legal issues and complications than anyone has ever imagined.'"
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Kick procrastination: Run a dash
via 43 Folders: "Procrastination can drive most of us into a spiral of shame that’s as mundane as it is painfully personal. We know what we should be doing, but some invisible hang-up keeps us on the line. Unfortunately, the guaranteed consequence of procrastination is growth in the scale of the task you’ve been putting off—as well as the anxiety that it creates. All the time you’re putting something off, your problem’s getting bigger—both in reality and in your head, where your colorful imagination is liable to turn even the most trivial item into an unsolvable juggernaut that threatens to overwhelm you. And that means extra stress, more procrastination, and the music goes round.
My favorite tonic for procrastination—which I have mentioned in passing previously—is what I call a dash, which is simply a short burst of focused activity during which you force yourself to do nothing but work on the procrastinated item for a very short period of time—perhaps as little as just one minute. By breaking a few tiny pebbles off of your perceived monolith, you end up psyching yourself out of your stupor, as well as making much-needed progress on your overdue project. Neat, huh?"
My favorite tonic for procrastination—which I have mentioned in passing previously—is what I call a dash, which is simply a short burst of focused activity during which you force yourself to do nothing but work on the procrastinated item for a very short period of time—perhaps as little as just one minute. By breaking a few tiny pebbles off of your perceived monolith, you end up psyching yourself out of your stupor, as well as making much-needed progress on your overdue project. Neat, huh?"
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
The post-hurricane speech Bush won't deliver
via SFGate: "My fellow Americans: First, I want to apologize to you, and particularly to the citizens of Mississippi and Louisiana, for my administration's failure to prepare for Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. I apologize for our excruciating slowness in getting life-supporting essentials -- food, clean water and medicine -- to the flood victims in New Orleans. Sadly, I realize that the federal government's inexcusable delay of at least two days in providing these essential items caused many unnecessary deaths, and unnecessarily prolonged the agony for thousands of mostly poor, black citizens of the United States, who were barely surviving in disgusting conditions. For that I am truly sorry."
Screed Against Michael Brown
via The Irish Trojan's blog: "If the braintrust running this country really thought that 'the water would drain away fairly quickly' after a direct hit on New Orleans from a major hurricane, then my God, our country is run by the most absolutely incompetent bunch of nitwits imaginable. The city is below sea level. Once it floods, there is nowhere for the water to 'drain away' to! Everyone knows this!!!"
Flying Solo: A Survival Guide for the Solo and Small Firm Lawyer
via abanet.com: "“This (book) covers the waterfront of issues faced daily by solo practitioners. Even if you have one or more of the earlier editions, you will find fresh ideas and valuable insights for your practice and your life as a solo. It is an essential addition to your library.”James E. Brill, Solo Lawyer, Houston, Texas"
Laying a Foundation to Impeach a Witness at Deposition
South Carolina Trial Law Blog: "Evan Schaeffer recently wrote a post on How to Start a Deposition at his Illinois Trial Practice Weblog. It’s a good post for young lawyers on how to get started. That reminded me of the opening questions that I use to lock a witness down in the event that the witness needs to be impeached at trial:"
Finding Where The Work Is
via abanet.com: "Although these are important sources of work, it is the rare attorney who can count on these sources of work alone to fill out an annual expectation. This means that we have to go find work. Searching for, qualifying, and closing new or additional business is as important to building a successful practice as your numbers this year for annual hours worked, billed and realized. So, how do we do that?"
Practicing Your Passion
via ABA's GP|Solo Magazine - July/August 2005: "If you want to find passion in your law practice but seem to be having difficulty, take some quiet time and make a list of such cultural messages. Although it may be challenging to identify the many “givens” in your life, it is well worth the effort. This exercise will get you ready for a true transformation in your work: Instead of responding reflexively to situations, you can consciously choose to act—or not act. Once you’re able to do that, you will be able to choose your own culture.
The possibilities are, if not endless, much more varied than most lawyers imagine. See the sidebar “Four Success Stories” on page 13 for some examples of how this can be done. Every law practice can be personalized so that the heart, as well as the head, is satisfied and more at peace."
The possibilities are, if not endless, much more varied than most lawyers imagine. See the sidebar “Four Success Stories” on page 13 for some examples of how this can be done. Every law practice can be personalized so that the heart, as well as the head, is satisfied and more at peace."
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Music Licensing Reform
via the Copyright Office: Statement of Marybeth Peters, The Register of Copyrights before the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, Committee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives, 109th Congress, 1st Session, June 21, 2005.
Site offers open-source clearinghouse
via CNET News.com: "Start-up SourceLabs has launched a Web site that draws on the latest collaboration and syndication tools to create a sort of owner's manual for open-source software.
Called Swik, the site combines a search engine, a wiki for posting documentation and reviews, and information-sharing tools that use Really Simple Syndication, or RSS. The site was launched Wednesday.
Swik is aimed at people, notably software developers, who seek a listing of open-source products and a communications hub to help navigate through the tens of thousands of projects out there."
Called Swik, the site combines a search engine, a wiki for posting documentation and reviews, and information-sharing tools that use Really Simple Syndication, or RSS. The site was launched Wednesday.
Swik is aimed at people, notably software developers, who seek a listing of open-source products and a communications hub to help navigate through the tens of thousands of projects out there."
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Just How Much Did VCs Pocket On Google?
via Burnham's Beat: "As it currently stands, both Kleiner and Sequoia have already distributed the vast majority of their stakes to their LPs. Thanks to the wonder of the SEC's Form 4, it's possible to go back and calculate exactly how much money the firms have made for their LPs to date. It's also possible to see how much the individual VCs have received (John Doerr and Mike Moritz) and even to make a realtively precise guess at the specific carried interests that each VC has in their respective fund.
In the case of Kleiner, they made their first big distribution of shares to LPs on 11/17/04 when they distributed about 5.7M shares, about a quarter of their total stake, at $172.5 a share which equates to about $983M. They made another distribution on 2/4 of 11.4M shares, about 54% of their stake, at $203.66 per share for a cool $2.3BN. On 5/2/04, they made another distribution of 1.1M shares worth $247M. In total, to date they have distributed shares worth $3.549BN. They still have another 2.6M shares worth $752M as of yesterday's close, so the total value of their stake is $4.3BN which represents a 344X return on their investment of $12.5M ... not too shabby."
Update.
In the case of Kleiner, they made their first big distribution of shares to LPs on 11/17/04 when they distributed about 5.7M shares, about a quarter of their total stake, at $172.5 a share which equates to about $983M. They made another distribution on 2/4 of 11.4M shares, about 54% of their stake, at $203.66 per share for a cool $2.3BN. On 5/2/04, they made another distribution of 1.1M shares worth $247M. In total, to date they have distributed shares worth $3.549BN. They still have another 2.6M shares worth $752M as of yesterday's close, so the total value of their stake is $4.3BN which represents a 344X return on their investment of $12.5M ... not too shabby."
Update.
Mixing open source and business
via CNet News Blog: "Optaros is different than most consulting and systems integration outfits in that the venture-backed firm builds custom applications using open-source software.
That requires the company, which launched at the beginning of this year, to have explicit intellectual property policies and clear rules of engagement regarding open source projects, said company vice president Stephen Walli, who authored the policy, in a blog posting on Wednesday."
That requires the company, which launched at the beginning of this year, to have explicit intellectual property policies and clear rules of engagement regarding open source projects, said company vice president Stephen Walli, who authored the policy, in a blog posting on Wednesday."
David Foster Wallace - Commencement Speech at Kenyon University
via marginalia: "As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what 'day in day out' really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know "
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what 'day in day out' really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know "
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